Microsoft Patents the Censoring of Speech

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Microsoft a patent for the Automatic Censorship of Audio Data for Broadcast, an invention that addresses 'producing censored speech that has been altered so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible.' The patent describes methods for muting offensive words and replacing them with less offensive versions, and 'a third alternative provides for overwriting the undesired word with a masking sound, i.e., "bleeping" the undesired word with a tone.' After all, there's nothing worse than being subjected to offensive speech when you're shooting someone in the head."

Yay!

So now the parents of kids too young to play dont have to worry about letting them play!!

Come on, if you're old enough to play the game, you're old enough to either deal with it or tell them to stuff a sock in it. There are so many other options to work with. Why not just mute the stupid player? Or not even use the voip at all? Like the article says, its only really used for trash talk anyway. Unless I know who I'm playing with, I'm not going to try and coordinate anything.

Stupid idea.

BTW first post!

Re:Yay!

What's worse, do they bother censoring the ideas, or do they just use softer words?

Hey, you mother[LOVER] I'm going to skull[LOVE] your [LOVING] corpse and then I'm going to get you down on your knees and get your corpse to [WHISTLE] on my [SKINFLUTE]

Or would the Microsoft device just change the whole sentence to something like

[I LIKE YOU. WE SHOULD GET TOGETHER FOR AGE APPROPRIATE SOCIAL BEVERAGES.]

Useless

Trust me when I say you can come up with new curses faster than you can code them into an automatic censorship proram...

Nevermind all the fantastic new accents this is going to promote. And if you disagree; well quck you.

Re:Useless

Trust me when I say you can come up with new curses faster than you can code them into an automatic censorship proram...

Pondering this make me feel a whole lot better about the whole enterprise. I'm all in favor of protecting budding young minds from the use of profanity as a substitute for creative expression... by teaching them that profanity is the inspiration for expressing yourself creatively. Also I like the thought of someone going to their manager and saying, "I need a ruling on 'defecating masonry'. Can we let that go?"

Re:Useless

Pondering this make me feel a whole lot better about the whole enterprise.

Good thinking. I often think the standard of cursing in this language tends to be woefully inadequate, consisting of the mindless and dull repetition of combinations of the same four-letter words. For once, Microsoft could be doing something positive to improve articulacy of profane expression. It might not be what they intend, but I won't lose any sleep over that. ;-)

Re:

Combinations of even one four-letter word, when used creatively, can be quite educational. [nailmaster.ru]

Re:

I'm all in favor of protecting budding young minds from the use of profanity

My parents kept tight controls over what I was allowed to see/hear. Fortunately, I learned profanity from other kids on the playground at school.

Re:Useless

I'm all in favor of protecting budding young minds from the use of profanity as a substitute for creative expression...

I know I speak for many of us here when I say:

Fuck you.

Keep your intellectual parenting persuits where they belong: in your home. Raise your own fucking kids, and let me raise mine without government interference. We'll let them both compete in 20 years and see who did a better job.

The moment you get your way with bad language censorship, I get my way with religious censorship.

Re:Useless

"I need a ruling on 'defecating masonry'. Can we let that go?"

"Copulate that excrement!"

Re:

"Fornicate that stool"?

Re:Useless

And if you disagree; well quck you.

Dude, don't disrespect your fellow Slashdot posters. That's crunked up.

I'm sceptical

I'm sceptical that it'll work that well. I do think it'll be more interesting than listening to people using fuck as punctuation - which is to me is dismally boring.

Question: how will it cope with people using stuff like "Jesus/G-d" as an expletive? That sort of thing is offensive to many people too.

Imagine if people started using Muhammad as an expletive. You can't just censor every mention of Muhammad because that will get you in big trouble too ;).

It'll be interesting if the system can tell from the cont

Re:I'm sceptical

As a Christian I actually find "fucking hell" less offensive, and by the way Jesus is also regarded as a prophet amongst muslims. It seems a violent and vocal minority of muslims appear to take offense at almost anything, almost anything can be regarded as insulting their religion, when in fact they're the ones ruining the reputation of their religion the most.

I actually don't have a big problem with people saying fuck or using other expletives. To me there's a use for expletives. For example, if you were walking about and minding your own business, then some vehicle veered off the road and took your arm off. Now that's a perfectly valid time to say fuck or whatever.

I just find it silly when people use it as punctuation. It's like reviewers giving 100% or 0% ratings in all of their reviews. Amusing for a few seconds at most.

I'm intrigued.

Naturally, I didn't read the article, but I have to say I'm intrigued by this. It would come in extremely handy for radio stations if they no longer needed to have a delay on their live broadcasts. It would especially benefit college radio stations because they often have to limit what they can allow on air since they cannot afford the equipment that is required to have a delay. Although this technology might be very expensive as well, so who knows. I guess I ought to swallow my pride and read the article!

Oh come on.....

Is the heading not a TAD over the top here?

Broadcasters can be, and have been fined thousands of dollars PER EVENT, through violations of FCC rules. One slip of the tongue should not be the basis for fining a program out of existance.

A tool to help in that regards DOES NOT equal sensorship, and the title is a ridiculous assertion that hurts credibility around here.

Hate Microsoft if you want, but Christ, why be stupid about it?

What is next? "Microsoft wants to eat your babies"?

As supposedly logic-driven geeks, can we not do better?

Re:Oh come on.....

What is next? "Microsoft wants to eat your babies"?

No, no, no. "Microsoft Sues Baby Eaters for Copyright Infringement". Pay attention.

Re:Oh come on.....

You must be new here.

IAAPL (I am a Patent Lawyer) ... as an engineer, I loved Slashdot. As a lawyer, I now know better and just come on here for laughs. It's like watching Sarah Palin discuss patent law.

Re:Oh come on.....

Keep laughing. One day, someone like me is going to string you up in a tree by your neck.

Careful, we're talking about lawyers here. By now, someone has probably patented "a method whereby a human is elevated off the ground be means of large vegetable structures for the purposes of punishment".

Try it and you'll be in a world of hurt.

Harry Enfield...

Reminds me of this clip from Harry Enfield:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmRTUNh1vPo [youtube.com]

[For those hard of flashing, it's a parody of a short gangster conversation in which the bad words have been taped over with better words]

Mother smiling gumdrops!

Mother smiling gumdrops! I think that's a bunch of bull smurfs! That sparkle pony happy hole, Bill Gates and his piece of rainbow company, Microsoft, can go flower themselves with a sunshine until they bleed out their bunnies!

Mother@*&$%#!

What the Luck? Those Gassholes in Redmond can't stop me from sMitting up a verbal storm. I'll BLiss all over their parade!

Sunny

I...love...Windows Vista. It is a piece of...brilliance. I want to take a sledge hammer and ... gently caress ... it to turn it into a pile of ... sunshine.

Who watches the watcher?

It'll be interesting to see just how such technology will be abused. Want to prevent speech that might inspire someone to stand up and do something regarding a certain topic, simply filter out keywords in context to the topic itself to help tilt the topic to favor one group's interests over another.

"Free" speech is long dead and buried. Welcome to the next China.

Re:How original

You don't have to use Microsoft products, just switch to ###########

Re:

How fun. This as already ben done in spain for some organization alike the RIAA called SGAE [escolar.net].

note: humm... Linux is betwen moron and fucking here. I will make it bold.

Here is the code:

palabras="mafiosos, ladrones, hijos de puta, hijo putas, chorizos, chupopteros, chupópteros, sangrantes, sangrais, sangráis, gilipoyas, por el culo, joderos, que os jodan, chaqueteros, mierda, agilipollao, alamierda, bujarra, bujarrilla, bujarron, bujarrón, cabron, cabrón, cabrona, cabronas, cabroncete, cabr